Sister Bridget & Sister Bernadette at Providence Row
The Sisters of Mercy set up Providence Row in Spitalfields back in 1860 as the first non-sectarian shelter to offer support to the homeless, and I was very curious to meet the Sisters still working here today because I have such respect for the honourable undertaking they have pursued over all these years.
The very name of this place, Spitalfields, is a contraction of “Hospital Fields”, referring to the Hospital of St Mary set up as a refuge here for the vulnerable in 1197 by Walter and Roisia Brunus. Regrettably, the transitional nature of the area, situated between the wealth of the City of London and the poorer outer boroughs, has required the existence of such a refuge for nearly a thousand years. This could change if the government achieves its declared ambition to end homelessness by 2012, but in the meantime the essential work of caring for the growing numbers of dispossessed goes on here in Spitalfields.
Sister Bridget (above) works in the kitchen and Sister Bernadette (below) runs the laundry at the Providence Row Day Centre on Wentworth St. They work as volunteers at the centre, now run by an independent charity, where every day two hundred homeless people arrive for breakfast. Nowadays, as well as providing immediate relief like food and laundry, the centre offers long-term support – everyone that turns up begins a conversation to get them back into permanent housing and employment. Recently, around half of those arriving at Providence Row are Polish or Romanian, legal economic migrants who are victims of the recession, ineligible for benefits, they quickly become destitute without work. Sometimes the solution can be as simple as providing transport home to Poland and Providence Row works with a Polish charity to provide this lifeline.
There is a hush in the centre around midday, once most of the visitors have returned to the streets with their pack lunches and it was at this time I was able to enjoy a quiet moment with the two Sisters. These bright-spirited women recited their life stories to me quickly without embellishment, all the time cradling modest sandwich lunches wrapped in cling film. After years of education and preparation, each has devoted their entire life to hard work in the service of others without any reward beyond the satisfaction of the task itself. Although they gave up wearing habits fifteen years ago, they still pursue an ascetic existence based upon their three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Sister Bernadette sums it up for me,“Instead of getting married and having children, these are our children”.
Sister Bridget joined the Sisters in 1966 in London and after working first in Dorset came to Spitalfields sixteen years ago. “I like helping people”, she says lightly, by way of understated explanation – but you know it is her absolute vocation. One hundred and fifty years after they set up Providence Row, there are just four Sisters in Spitalfields now, whereas twenty years ago there were eight and without new recruits their days here are numbered, because the appetite for this life of complete sacrifice has gone from the world.
Hailing from Dublin, Sister Bernadette entered the order in 1969 in Leamington Spa and worked first in Birmingham with children from broken homes before being sent to Spitalfields fifteen years ago. “I always wanted to work with homeless people ever since I was child”, she explains simply.
Sister Bernadette was enthusiastic to show me the cramped room where she spends all her days moving clothes between two machines and two driers in an endless sequence of laundry. She had only managed ten loads of dirty laundry that morning, she says. Not so many among two hundred clients. “I could do a hundred loads of laundry if I only had the machines!” she adds enthusiastically. “Quite understandably, sometimes they get angry with you if you can’t do their laundry and I try to be as polite as I can” she confides. “But there’s great respect for the Sisters” she qualifies, then with a wry smile adds, “An Australian once said to me, if anyone comes near you or lays a hand on you, call me and I will deal with them!” and she rolls her eyes in amused acknowledgement of the sometimes challenging nature of the work.
For the Sisters, their faith is expressed through an energetically practical ministry, getting up early (5:30 or 6:00) and doing what needs to be done – because somebody has to do the washing for people without homes, year in, year out, and send them off with clean clothes, a packed lunch and a new pair of socks to continue life’s journey in the hope of better times. In spite of a grinding routine that many would characterise as mundane, there is nothing cynical or weary about Sister Bridget or Sister Bernadette. I have always believed in the notion of everyday heroism and these two enigmatic women exemplify it for me.
St John, the first mince pies of the season
The commencement of the grouse shooting season on the Glorious Fourth and the arrival of the Beaujolais Nouveau are without interest for me for me, what I get excited about is the First Batch of Mince Pies baked on 1st December each year by Mr Gellatly, baker and pastry chef at St John. Yesterday, I awoke to an auspicious clear blue sky and my washing, which had been dripping on the line for three whole days, had dried overnight. Skipping breakfast, I opened the first window on the advent calendar (the angels of the Annunciation), grabbed my sheepskin hat and took a stroll over to St John Bread & Wine in Commercial St.
As I approached the bakery counter, I could see the mince pies gleaming with a subtle glazed topping, none of your pallid pale pastry here – the shortcrust of these pies is golden brown. Mr Gellatly, who had probably been awake all night baking them, leaned over with a proud paternal smile as the waiter put two in a bag for me, declaring the arrival of the sacred moment “That’s the first mince pies of the season!” Between the three of us we exchanged a glance of recognition and I think Mr Gellatly would have liked to have said more, but his mince pies spoke eloquently for him because I was out the door and down the street before I knew it. The hunger pangs as a consequence of the lack of breakfast were leading me on and as I turned the corner from Commercial St into Puma Court, I became aware of warmth in my hands, the mince pies in the brown paper bag I was clutching were still hot from the oven. I stopped in my tracks in a powerful moment of realisation.
The picture above was supposed to show two mince pies on a plate but unfortunately only one made it to the photoshoot. I am not ashamed to confess that the other was consumed somewhere between Puma Court, Wilkes St and bakery paradise. Standing alone on the pavement in the sparkling winter sunlight among the ancient houses, I bit into the soft nutty pastry of my first mince pie of the season.
In a moment, all the Christmases of my life came back to me in a rush as I was transported instantaneously to far away country places and the seasonal celebrations of my relations now long dead, where I am witnessing events as a child. For me, every Christmas contains the emotional import of all the Christmases I have already had in my life, like a set of Chinese boxes. And a mince pie is the key to open up this powerful archive of experience.
Back in the vivid present tense of Puma Court, as the pastry melted in my mouth, I savoured buttery shortbread and the crunch of a few grains of sugar topping the insubstantial case but, even as I became aware of these flavours, I was already enjoying the intense fruity mincemeat that was deliciously tangy without being over sweet. The proportions were just right, in his wisdom Mr Gellatly understands that the case is simply a means to end, just enough pastry to hold a generous portion of mincemeat. It is a question of form meeting function.
Already, as I write this now, the blue and white plate is bare although I am still enjoying the strong citrus aftertaste of the mincemeat and excited in anticipation of all the mince pies to come this Christmas. Somewhere out there in a factory, Mr Scrooge the baker thinks he can get away with making heavy pastry cases with a tiny spoonful of mincemeat inside and fool people, but that is all humbug now because Mr Gellatly knows that Christmas is about generosity and the wonderful St John mince pies are here!
Robert Ryan, Papercut Artist
In a quiet street off the Old Bethnal Green Rd, there is a large wooden door. If you go through a smaller door within this large one, you enter a passage, under an arch, that leads to a courtyard where there is another door. Go through this door, climb up a staircase and you will find the secret den of Rob Ryan, the internationally famous papercut artist. With his luxuriant curls and thick beard, working here in this old loft, intent upon his creations, Rob Ryan might appear as a Romantic nineteenth century figure – like “The Tailor of Gloucester” – if it were not for the hoodie and Raybans that bring him bang up to date.
“I am not a connoisseur of papercutting” Rob declares in characteristic, self-deprecating style, when I ask him of the origins of his work, as we cosy up on a couch upholstered in denim jeans. Years ago, before the seismic shift in cultural hierarchies that happened at the end of the last century, Rob was a painter who included words in his paintings and got a lot of flak for it. “Cheating” was the particular crime levelled at him at the Royal College of Art, where Rob was studying printmaking. Rob produces a scruffy old Thames & Hudson paperback of Tyrolean papercuts – if there was a eureka moment, it was the discovery of this book. Making papercuts, he explains was a natural extension of the screenprint stencils that he was already cutting and the symmetrical nature of these papercuts did not allow for the inclusion of words. So papercutting was the “cure” for the “malaise” of sticking words in his pictures.
Rob’s story is a startling reminder of how the hegemony of the art world has changed now, but it does not begin to account for the extraordinary flair that he brings to everything he touches. This is work of immense appeal that celebrates life and the complex emotions that colour our daily experience. Obviously, the “cure” was completely ineffectual because his work is full of words that provide an important dynamic to the images. “I like the work of William Blake, and those very English twentieth century artists like Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden, Eric Fraser,” Rob explains, and his work is an honourable inheritor of this lively graphic tradition. There is an emotional fullness and attractive energy to all of Rob’s work that speaks of an artist who has found his perfect medium. Quickly, he saw the limitations of entirely symmetrical papercuts and that is when the words came back in again. Getting passionate, he gestures rhetorically and, in delight, declares of papercutting “There is no cheating! There is no right! There is no wrong!”
Things start to get exciting now, as he offers me an apple, and moves over to his work table to commence a papercut. His energy changes and a serene Rob Ryan emerges as he opens a notebook and begins purposefully to copy a sketch in pencil onto a sheet of paper on a light box. Then he transfers the paper to a green cutting board and begins to cut it out with a scalpel in swift confident strokes. There is a different, more intense, atmosphere in the room now, everything focussed to the quick movement of the blade between Rob’s nimble fingers, and I reach over to capture the moment with my camera. Then it has passed, Rob inscribes the papercut and kindly presents it to me with as a souvenir. It is an image of a mother and child playing together. As I examine the treasured scrap, when I get back to my desk, I am conscious of the sinuous subtle lines of this delicate cut that give these figures life and movement, and capture an ephemeral moment of intimate affection between parent and child.
In a papercut, all the elements have to be connected, human figures have to hold hands or touch, and as result of this technical requirement, this sense of connection has become a defining element in Rob Ryan’s work, both as technique and as subject matter too. The breathtaking skill on display brings an audience to these works, but it is the language that gives depth in the exposure of ambivalent or raw emotion, and this emotionalism, whether light or dark, creates an exciting counterpoint to the control required to make them.
Years ago, Rob had a studio in the Old Spitalfields Market before it was demolished. He regularly used to eat a huge roast lunch at the Market Cafe in Fournier St before it shut at eleven in the morning, to set him up for a day’s work. He has now become one of the most popular artists, both in our neighbourhood and far beyond, and I like to think that in his use of familiar domestic images, he captures something of the essence of the life of this place as it is lived now.
You can find Rob’s work at Ryantown in Columbia Rd, open every Saturday and Sunday, and in a major exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park until 21st February.
(Thanks to Rob, we are able to follow Edward Bawden’s print of Liverpool St Station which was our banner for November with a detail of Rob Ryan’s print “We Don’t Fly North” 2008 as our banner for December. The papercut above is “My Home” 2009. Photos of Rob’s work by Jonty Wilde)
Spitalfields' magnificent organ
For over a century, we were proud to say we had the biggest organ in the country here in Spitalfields. Richard Bridge’s organ built for Christ Church in 1735 is the only large organ to survive in Britain from the age of Handel and, as Bridge is rated as the Stradivarius of organ builders and his organ in Spitalfields is considered to be his finest, we have plenty of reasons to brag about our magnificent organ.
I learnt all these impressive facts from Carolyn Fuest of the Friends of Christ Church Spitalfields last week when we met up in the vestry for a chat. The vestry room itself is a remarkable space with a beautiful stone vaulted roof, built high above the porch of the church, with a hatch in the floor that can be opened to haul bells up into the bell tower and a circular window offering a view towards the market down Brushfield St. As we sat together at the long vestry table in the dramatic shafts of low-angled winter sunlight, Carolyn told me the full story, how the organ was removed in 1996 to protect it from damage during the restoration of the church (what you see above is just the case) and, most excitingly, what has been discovered. The organ was altered in the nineteenth century and again in the twentieth, but when it was taken apart they discovered enough eighteenth century pipework left to permit a reconstruction as Richard Bridge built it in 1735.
My imagination was fired when Carolyn explained there is a particular English eighteenth century sound world, distinctive from on the continent of Europe, which has been entirely lost but will be heard once again when this organ is restored. More than this, there are eighteenth century composers whose work is lost because there is no eighteenth century organ to perform their works. The potential exists to rediscover a whole repertoire of music and hear Handel’s English organ works in the way he intended for the first time in centuries.
Let me assure you, I intend to be there on the day this organ is first played again and report back to you directly on the special qualities of this vanished world of sound. We shall have to patient though, because the contract for the renovation was only signed last month.
The restoration is being done by William Drake in Buckfastleigh, one of the most renowned organ builders, who has already restored several of the most significant organs in Britain. Bill is pictured below on the right with his fellow-organ builder Joost de Boer, with the crowns and mitres from the organ case at the time it was dismantled. It will take several years for Bill and Joost to complete the restoration and cost over a million pounds, but we shall start to see the pipes returning to the case in 2012 with the possibility of performance in 2013.
More than half the money has been raised already and I have faith in Carolyn Fuest to bring the project to completion, because she disclosed to me with pride that the definitively monumental renovation of the building itself was completed on schedule and within budget. Half a century ago when the building was abandoned, we might have lost Nicholas Hawksmoor’s masterpiece, an architectural landmark of the highest order, if it had not been for the extraordinary efforts of the Friends to save it. Evidently, there is a trove of stories here and I made a pact with Carolyn to bring them to you over the coming years.
This photo by John Brennan, top photo of the case by SRB Humphreys.
Columbia Road Market 14
As I came round the corner into Columbia Rd early this morning, my heart leapt to see the first Christmas trees of the season on sale in the market. I walked up and down, savouring the fragrance of pine in the empty market beneath a sky heavy with rain. Then one of the stallholders yelled “Here we go!” and the sleet came down heavily upon us. The half-dozen other hardy customers and I huddled with some of the traders under a huge green and white stripe umbrella, gaping at the torrent.
Once it eased off, I bought myself a stripy Amaryllis (Hippeastrum) for £3.50 and ran home to make porridge. Although I am uncertain about the aesthetics of these strangely artificial plants with their enormous single flowers, like gramophone horns on sticks, I always buy one each year because I am inspired by their phenomenal will to life. Below you can see the red monster I had last year.
For the rest of today, weather permitting, I shall be out on Brick Lane giving away free copies of the first Spitalfields Life print digest edition. If you want to pick one up, copies can be collected from Sandra at the Golden Heart on Commercial St, or Labour & Wait, Shelf and The Carpenters’ Arms on Cheshire St, or Ryantown on Columbia Rd, or The Book Art Bookshop on Pitfield St.
Ashley Jordan Gordon, photographer
The gaze of this girl on Kingsland Rd is inescapable, she is the still point at the centre of Ashley Jordan Gordon‘s unforgettable photograph. With the deep perspective of Shoreditch High St to her left and the momentum of the crowd to her right, she stands poised in her own turning world, ready for whatever adventure the night will bring.
It is a measure of this remarkable picture that it draws you right in to a drama of infinite possibility. Gordon admits, “I thrive on catching action and atmosphere as they converge in a narrative moment. It is the convergence between myself, the subject and the camera – how we got there and what happened once we met – that is exciting. It is an act of life happening…”
Since I featured the photographs of John Gay and Paul Trevor, I have been looking at recent photography that captures the life of the neighbourhood but found little that was distinctive until, to my delight, I came across “Girl on Kingsland Rd” by Ashley Jordan Gordon, currently featured in the Taylor Wessing Photographic Prize exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery until 14th February. If you click on her name at the top of this article you can go to Gordon’s website, explore her portfolio of concert photography and read the blog recording her daily life here in words and pictures. Remarkably, all the images on display share the same vibrant clarity of form.
Clubbing has become a major part of the culture of this place and “Girl on Kingsland Rd” manages to capture this entire phenomenon in a single iconic image. All the hopes and dreams, grace, chaos and trashiness are here in this pictorial microcosm. Gordon likes the photographic masters of the last century like Walker Evans, Eugene Atget and Henri Cartier Bresson but to me her expansive panoramic composition recalls nineteenth century narrative painters like William Powell Frith, Theodore Gericault and John Everett Millais.
Unlike the photographers I previously featured, Gordon is a dynamic colourist. Observe the strategic use of red in the photo above and of yellow in the picture below. In each case the colour is part of the meaning of these pictures and it connects the subjects with their environment. But it is the people we see, and it is portraiture that is Ashley Jordan Gordon’s passion, “No matter what other kinds of photographs draw me in, I always come back to loving portraits of people. I love watching and meeting people, and taking the time to take a really good look at someone,” she says.
Let me admit, I walked past that line of clubbers on Kingsland Rd a hundred times and never gave it a second look, until now. Similarly, this delicate subtle portrait of a “Guy with Bike on Brick Lane” is a familiar subject that you might pass by in Spitalfields any Sunday, but through Gordon’s eyes you see it for the first time.
Photographs copyright © Ashley Jordan Gordon
Artists' canteen at the Rochelle School
Through this door in Arnold Circus, you will find the Rochelle Canteen situated in the former bicycle shed of the Rochelle School, now run by James Moores’ A Foundation as a complex of artists’ studios and gallery. The shed has had a coat of white paint, a steel kitchen has been installed in one end and white dining tables placed at the other. Beyond the word “canteen” on one of the buzzers at the gate, there is no indication out on the street that the Rochelle Canteen exists. But this did not stop Evening Standard food critic Fay Maschler picking chefs Margot Henderson and Melanie Arnold’s canteen as one of her top new restaurants when they opened. I was taken there recently for a birthday lunch, the two of us shared an impressive large black bream cooked to perfection and served with new potatoes and fennel, all for £20. Even after a couple of years, this undercover canteen remains Shoreditch’s best kept secret.
I sneaked round there one morning last week to meet Melanie and Margot and they explained how they ran a catering business from Margot’s flat in Covent Garden before James Moores invited them to open the canteen at the Rochelle School. The idea was not just to cook food for the artists who have studios there but to create a space where people from the neighbourhood could eat too, connecting the school to the surrounding area. It certainly is a fascinating clientele that turns up for lunch. Last time I was there, I was intrigued by a man at the next table examining contact sheets of Wes Andersen with the animated figures from “Fantastic Mr Fox,” the next time I saw these one of these beautiful pictures by Tim Walker was when my copy of The New Yorker flip-flopped through the letterbox a month later.
Interviewing Margot and Melanie is like being the supply teacher sized up by the flirtatiously giggly top girls from St Trinians. Maybe it is the influence of the schoolyard environment? There is no doubt they are a pair of professionals at the top of their game, two serious and stylish women – Margot in an elegant print dress and Melanie with an impressive pair of heels. Sitting at table with them, you quickly appreciate an interesting dynamic that reveals a genuine feeling for the creation of wonderful food, leavened by a refreshingly down-to-earth attitude.
While Melanie is trying to persuade me to have toast and marmite, Margot blushes as she searches like a poet for satisfactory language to describe their approach – because all the vocabulary she might have used (including adjectives like “seasonal” and “regional”) has been co-opted by our more venial supermarkets. “Simple food prepared with respect and love” she ventures and then, as she returns striding proudly across the restaurant with today’s menu, adds “gentle food that lifts you up.” She points out Venison & Carrots, “This is the dish of the season” she says with authority. “There’s no fuss here”, confirms Melanie with a smile, raising an eyebrow seductively as she draws my attention to Rice Pudding & Prunes, the perfect comforting autumn dessert. Now I am beginning to feel hungry. “Don’t forget to tell everyone we open for breakfast from 9 o’clock” adds Melanie, as we venture outside to take the picture below.
